Review: REALbasic 5.5

Product Name: REALbasic 5.5 Professional (electronic download edition)
Company: REAL Software Inc.
URL: http://www.realsoftware.com
Category: Programming
Price:
- Standard: $99.95
- Professional: $399.95
- Academic discount available
Requirements:
- PowerMac G3 or better
- 32 MB RAM
- 20 MB hard drive space.
- Mac OS X or OS 9
Rating: 4 bounces - Pure Lust

The Macintosh has always enjoyed a good variety of options for rapid software development. HyperCard set the standard when it was released back in 1987, combining a database-like stack of cards for the interface and data storage, with a scripting language called HyperTalk that was similar to normal English and thus relatively easy to learn. The result was that people with no formal computer programming education could easily create simple applications, and more expert programmers were able to use HyperCard to create heavyweight applications and products (of which the most famous is probably the game Myst). Other companies developed more or less similar card-based software development tools, of which Runtime Revolution (which we reviewed a few months ago) is just one. HyperCard also had a great influence in other fields of computing, too; JavaScript and hyperlinked text on the Internet are just two aspects of modern computing that were inspired by HyperCard.

For whatever reason, Apple killed off HyperCard in stages, development ceasing in the mid 1990s and then being dropped from the product list in 2004. Fortunately for Mac users, there are plenty of alternatives, and one of the most interesting is REALbasic, a version of the popular BASIC programming language that has a similar drag-and-drop interface to HyperCard but with the advantage of producing leaner, faster programs. This is because REALbasic exports the final program as machine language code specific to whatever platform it is being used for. This contrasts with HyperCard (and equivalent card-based programming environments) that essentially have a ubiquitous code core around which is added a platform specific interpreter that turns has to convert instructions between the computer and the program on the fly. In reality, this doesn’t matter much if the program is small, but the bigger the program becomes, the greater the disparity in speed becomes. As a result, for many Mac programmers, REALbasic has become the tool of choice for building fast, heavy-duty software.

But is REALbasic the new HyperCard? Is it really simple enough that a novice can download the program, buy a licence, read the PDF files that come with it, and get programming right away?

Installation & Manuals

AppleLust looked at the electronic edition of REALbasic 5.5, probably the best value way to buying this software. The package comprising the REALbasic program and its associated templates and files is downloaded directly from the REALbasic web site. The application itself is a 20 MB download, but with all the other files the total is over 100 MB. A licence key has to be purchased online to ‘activate’ the software; without the license key, it operates in a demonstration mode, allowing ten-days worth of use before it stops working. REALbasic comes in two versions, Standard ($99) and Professional ($399). There are several differences between the two versions, but the main one is that the Standard version can only produce software for a single platform. The Professional version of REALbasic can be used to create software for Mac, Windows, and Linux all on a single machine. Academic discounts apply to both versions (taking the Standard version to under $70) but they carry an important restriction: software developed using the Academic versions cannot be sold.

REALbasic has fairly modest requirements, and any current Macintosh will run it very nicely, and even older ones should be up to the job. Apart from the lack of screen space, it ran useably well on a 500 MHz G3 iBook, and the only time it felt a little slow was during the compiling stage when software was being tested or exported to one or other platform. However, multi-platform developers will probably want to use a relatively fast computer so that they can run emulators for the other platforms to test out their software as they go along; I found Virtual PC 6.1 worked nicely on my 1 GHz G4 PowerBook and any software produced with the OS X version of REALbasic ran just fine in Windows XP Pro on Virtual PC.

REALbasic comes with easy to use and nicely designed tutorials and guide books.

My biggest complaint about Runtime Revolution was poor quality of the manuals provided. It wasn’t that the information wasn’t there; it was that they were written in such a way that they didn’t help new users and made it difficult for even experienced users to find what they wanted quickly. REALbasic is very different and comes with a very nice set of tutorials and manuals. These are printed in the boxed set, but come as PDF files in the electronic download edition that we looked at. A Quick Start Guide starts the user off by introducing the basic aspects to the interface and coding using a very nice little project, a URL manager.

REALbasic includes a couple of projects, such as URL Manager, that introduce the user to the key techniques and concepts.

Once you’re done with that, the Tutorial takes you through creating a basic word processor. This introduces the user to more complex concepts such as adding menu bars and how to handle commands like “open” and “save”. Both the Quick Start Guide and the Tutorial are well written, and divide up both projects into easily digested bite-size chunks. Overall, it is probably fair to say that someone with zero programming experience will find that REALbasic will be much easier to learn than Revolution not because it is simpler (it isn’t) but because the quality of the guides and manuals is so much better.

User Interface

REALbasic is essentially a graphical program, where the user drags and drops the various elements such as buttons, fields, and menus onto a blank application window. Code is added to those elements that need it, in much the same way as HyperTalk scripts are added to buttons and fields in HyperCard. Compared with HyperCard there is of course much more flexibility, with the ability to use full colour graphics, QuickTime movies, Internet connections, and so on much more easily.

Part of getting the look and feel of your new program right is to make sure the interface is clear and simple. REALbasic has a lot to offer here, and not just in providing quick access to things like tabbed windows, sliders, and so on. Any buttons, menus, or other user interface elements added to your project snap into place relative to the other elements, making it possible to create a clean-looking application easily.

One of the many niceties is automatic alignment and spacing guides.

Then, when you come to adding code, REALbasic watches what you are typing and then offers possible phrases to save you having to type the whole thing in. It doesn’t just draw from its basic library of terms and phrases, but also from the name of any objects and elements you have created specifically for the project at hand. This is a tremendously useful timesaver.

REALbasic offers to fill in parts of your code as you go along, saving time and effort.

Overall, the user interface is one of the simplest and best designed you are likely to come across on an application in this class. Even if you find the coding part of the process beyond you at first, actually creating the “front end” of your project is logical and straightforward.

REALbasic vs. HyperTalk

Now, this is where things get a bit trickier. Despite the excellent manuals and guides, there is no escaping the fact that actually creating the code behind the front end of your application is more difficult that it is with HyperCard (or, by extension, something like Runtime Revolution). Where those applications use a programming language that is more or less similar to English, REALbasic uses its own language, a version of a venerable computer programming language called BASIC. This language is not at all like English, and things that are obvious in HyperTalk can be much less so in REALbasic.

For example, consider a button that was required to run a script that multiplied the value in one field by ten, and put the answer into another field. In HyperTalk this might go something like this:

on mouseup

put (10 * card field "Input") into card field "Output"

end mouseup

This reads logically enough: when the mouse is pressed on this button, put ten times whatever is in the field Input into the field Output. Now, the same thing in REALbasic:

Sub Action()

OutputField.text = str((val(InputField.text)) * 10)

End Sub

See the difference? While the HyperTalk version is readable, if a bit odd, English, the REALbasic version of the same thing is definitely computer-speak. It begins with declaration of the subroutine (“Sub”) being an Action, and then tells the computer to take the value (“val”) from the string of characters (“str”) in the Input field box (“InputField.text”), multiply them buy ten, and then put them into the text field in the Output field box. Needless to say, if things are a bit arcane when multiplying a couple of numbers, it doesn’t get any easier with more complicated commands and processes.

A REALbasic Project

The best way to evaluate these sorts of programs is to actually try to make something useful. At the time I was reviewing REALbasic, I was working on a book about aquarium fish, and this involved having to do a bunch of different calculations and conversions. For example, estimating the numbers of fish that can be kept in an aquarium of a certain size, or having to convert between specific gravity (a measurement of density) and salinity (a measurement of concentration). So I set about trying to create an application that would do these for me, and so save me from having to use Excel or the OS X Calculator application.

The first stage in creating an application is to design the interface, and REALbasic offers a variety of templates to work from, including the typical Desktop Application and Console Applications that run in a terminal window (such as the Terminal in OS X). I chose to use the Desktop Application, which presents you with an empty “card” onto which you can drag and drop the interface elements from a floating palette. Once these are where you want them, you configure them as necessary, for example if you use tabbed window, you create the different tabs. Control-clicking brings up a contextual menu that offers various options, such as editing the code associated with a particular interface element.

Adding interface elements to your application is easy, simply a case of dragging the desired components from a floating palette, and then configuring them as required, for example as here with a tabbed window.

As mentioned earlier, adding code to buttons, fields, and all the other elements is what turns something that looks like a program into an actual working program, and for most people this is going to be the tricky bit. But having said this, it is perfectly possible to simply work through the Quick Start Guide and thus master enough of the basics to be able to replicate similar sort of code for your own, original applications without understanding very much of what is going on. In other words, if all you do is to copy bits of code from the tutorial materials and then edit it a bit so that it works with the buttons and fields on your application, you will probably find things will work out okay. All the essential stuff, like menu bars, dialogues, errors, text fields, and so on is covered in the training materials supplied with REALbasic, and this goes a very long way to making the program accessible and relatively easy to get the hang of.

From start to finish, it took me about a day and a half to work through the tutorials and pick up enough of REALbasic to be able to finish my project, which in the end involved tabbed windows, sliders, and calculations taking input from some fields and putting results in other fields. Testing the program is a little different to how debugging is done in HyperCard or Revolution; instead of simply swapping modes within the application, the REALbasic project is compiled and then launched as a bona fide application by itself. Compile errors (such as bad coding) are flagged before launch, and the user is taken directly to the offending bit of code, which is highlighted and the likely problem described.

Once finished, the REALbasic project can be exported as standalone applications for a Mac OS X, Mac Classic, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

Once you are happy with your project, you can then create standalone applications for Mac OS X, Mac Classic, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. A settings window allows you to define things like the name of the program, minimum memory requirements, version number, icons, and so on. Being able to export to platforms other than the Classic Mac OS obviously puts REALbasic well ahead of HyperCard.

Conclusion

When I was done with my project, I uploaded it to my web site making it available as freeware, and a couple of Mac software sites added it to their listings, including MacUpdate where you can see the download tally and read a few reviews . Within less than a week, the Mac OS X version was downloaded over 300 times, and the feedback was very positive. This basically says it all: it took was a weekend of work to go from knowing nothing about programming to producing something that hundreds of people can use.

I’m wildly enthusiastic about REALbasic and have no problems at all giving it the coveted four-bounce rating. While the underlying concepts are more difficult than HyperCard (or its successors, such as Runtime Revolution), the tutorials and guides are so thorough and so helpful that they go a long way to overcoming these obstacles. Highly recommended

- Dr. Neale Monks

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